Work Experience

(in reverse chronological order)

Role: AppDev Team - Senior Software Engineer and Front-end Architect

I returned to my previous team to impart my experience gained while on the Canopy team and bring their aging front-end architecture into modernity.

• Skills used: Angular 7 to 13, RxJS, Highcharts, Reactive and Functional Programming, JSONata, .NET Core Framework, C#, ASP.NET Core Web API, WebPack, Angular CLI, Gulp, Node.js/NPM, Angular Material UI Framework, SASS/CSS, Kendo UI for Angular, Azure and Azure Pipelines..
• Continued work on previous dashboard framework and architecture to support new data-driven visualization widgets including gauges, charts, and maps.
• Worked with the BI team to design and implement a number of new data-driven visualization widgets, including cartesian-style graphs and charts, geographical and numeric heatmaps, gauges, and expression-based card carousel. The dashboard framework and widgets are tailored to drive the discovery of insights relating to retail marketing and distribution.
• Designed and implemented an expression-based action command framework to facilitate the building of customizable, interactive dashboard experience for customers and employees. This allowed widgets to link to reports and other dashboards, creating a pathway for drill-downs and dynamic filtering.
• Designed and implemented a web-based visual dashboard designer that enabled users to build dashboards for the newly developed framework.
• Appointed to roles of front-end architect, product owner, and lead engineer of a team tasked with continuing the development of a new front-end framework and component-set (with documentation) for rapidly building new applications and modernizing existing applications. This framework and component-set was based on a “skunk-works” project I started on my own initiative after experiencing and observing the pains and inhibitions of an antiquated architecture with a large amount of technical debt. The framework was based on Angular and Angular Material with emphasis on not re-creating the wheel and only attempting to fill the gaps of functionality that were required by our planned applications. This involved either implementing the components in-house, or integrating existing open-source and paid third-party components using the integration facilities of our new framework.
• Designed and implemented a multi-layered containerized development environment for Angular front-end applications, using Docker on WSL2. The container was designed to create a consistent environment for all front-end developers and to reduce the onboarding time for new developers. The containerized environment was also used along with Azure Pipelines to build and deploy the container image to test and production environments.
• Acted as front-end technical expert and consultant on multiple new projects, including the design of new applications that were to utilize the aforementioned front-end framework..
• Acted as technical expert and lead engineer of a project to modernize our flagship web application, using the newly built framework in addition to Telerik's Kendo UI framework for Angular.
• Acted as technical liaison between teams to close knowledge gaps and troubleshoot issues.
• Created and maintained Azure pipelines for all front-end applications and frameworks.

Role: Canopy Team - Front-end Software Engineer

I was selected to be a part of the R&D team that developed new products including Canopy, an advanced analytics platform for online retail which also served as a comprehensive tool for clients to manage their online presence.

• Skills used: Angular 5, RxJS, NGRX, Highcharts, Reactive and Functional programming, Single Store pattern, .NET Core Framework, C#, ASP.NET Core Web API, Entity Framework Core, Node.js/NPM, WebPack, Angular CLI, Angular Material UI Framework, and SASS/CSS.
• Developed new and improved performance of analytics dashboard components, including various data visualizations. This required working closely with the BI engineers to accommodate the various types of online retail analytics.
• Designed and implemented UI/UX for user input of post-run data filtering for chart visualization. This filtering was applied after the content job had been processed and thus was very fast and efficient, and allowed the user to quickly and easily manipulate the visualizations.
• Worked with the team to develop a set of components and APIs for assembling client-side data queries for transforming data returned by RESTful Web API endpoints, using a URL scheme similar to ODATA. The API provided the ability to express filtering, paging, sorting, grouping, and aggregation of data. The fluent API signature was similar to .NET's LINQ, but callable from TypeScript/JavaScript.
• Helped to establish more advanced features of back-end Web API model bindings to parse and apply queries built by the aforementioned front-end API.
• Implemented front-end unit tests using Gulp, Jasmine, Karma, Angular CLI, and Angular Testing Framework.

Role: AppDev Team - Full-stack Software Engineer

Used Advanced JavaScript techniques and popular web frameworks and technologies, such as Angular, TypeScript, ASP.NET MVC, and Entity Framework to update, enhance, and add features to existing Reporting Studio web application. Reporting Studio was designed to provide retail reporting and analytics for our clients - vendors to Walmart, Target, and other prominent brick and mortar retailers.

• Designed and implemented a dashboard presentation framework to help curate and categorize existing reports and content, making them easier to find. The framework was highly extensible and scalable, facilitating rapid implementation and deployment of new types of content.
• Added functionality to facilitate multiple design surfaces in the AdHoc Report Designer which provided a user friendly way to express advanced dynamic filtering, to be used as a prefilter for the primary data-set produced by the report design on the main surface.
• Added new AdHoc Basic mode, a trimmed down version of the original AdHoc Report Designer. This resulted in increased adoption of that tool by existing clients and increased sales to new clients. The basic mode served as a general purpose report designer and as a segue to the original advanced designer.
• Implemented C# scripting engine and API to provide, with just a few clicks, advanced retailer-specific filtering concepts like “traited vs valid” via the AdHoc Basic mode.
• Employed the module pattern to strengthen the architecture of the AdHoc Report Designer, a user-friendly web-based drag-and-drop reporting design tool.
• Developed advanced map plotting feature for visualizing data points geographically. It supported multiple map browser windows to which data points could be plotted.
• Helped transition front-end JavaScript codebase to TypeScript.
• Implemented front-end build processes (using gulp and node.js), including generation of client-side entities and DTOs to be used for interop with Web APIs.
• Implemented front-end unit tests, using Gulp, Jasmine, Karma, Mocha, and PhantomJS.

• Designed and implemented online testing web application using ASP.NET Web APIs and an HTML/JavaScript front-end, involving Knockout.js and MVVM pattern. The application allowed the user to login to their test and navigate from question to question, selecting answers which were recorded on the server and instantly scored when the user finished the test. Involved heavy use of Knockout.js and the template binding, as well as cross-browser display of MathML content that was embedded in the questions' XHTML. Upon last check, it was found to have collected results for over 5 million tests from over 140 districts.
• Updated legacy web applications to allow servicing of school districts in multiple states.
• Updated data transfer system which connected to a new version of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Servers and installed, updated, ran reports, and finally downloaded the report results and delivered them to the destination folder.
• Designed and implemented a new version of content management and editor web application using ASP.NET Web API and an HTML/JavaScript front-end involving Knockout.js and the MVVM pattern. Implementation involved the EditLive! rich content editor Java applet, from Ephox. This application allowed users to create, edit and manage questions to be placed on assessments; including association of educational standards.
• Established source control branching and merging policies and source code patterns and conventions for new MVVM SPA web application stack, including MS SQL Server, Entity Framework 6, ASP.NET Web API 2, JavaScript, jQuery, Knockout.js, breeze.js, Bootstrap, and HTML. New application stack also included server-side and client-side components for data-driven bundling, minification, and dynamic loading of application resources, including JavaScript modules, HTML templates, and CSS stylesheets. The resources were grouped into “resource maps”, which could be referenced by JavaScript modules in a way that insured required resources were loaded before the module's code was executed, somewhat like require.js, but more comprehensive and designed to work more seamlessly with the Microsoft Web Optimization Framework (System.Web.Optimization).
• Used new stack to architect a SPA (Single Page Application) portal framework that facilitated navigation to and presentation of new versions of legacy applications built with new stack. The portal included a data-driven home page that displayed an icon for launching all of the applications to which the user had access.
• Used new stack and framework to build flexible and scalable data-bound front-end presentation components.
• One such component was a client-side datagrid that allowed user to dynamically sort by column(s) and directions of their choosing, and filter by columns as well. The grid used breeze.js to assemble OData queries on the client side, submit them to ASP.NET Web API controllers, and finally receive the results and display them via the Knockout.js templating system. It also allowed custom display and formatting of column data, using JS callbacks and option object conventions. The grid was expandable, allowing custom column templates to be specified via the grid's options. The grid was very flexible and could handle a variety of development scenarios.
• Designed and implemented a unified data-bound list component with two display modes: a dropdown list and a static listbox. This component displayed a list of items and allowed selection of either a single item or multiple items, depending on the options specified by the developer. Options for this component also included the ability to specify the fields to be used for binding display text and selected value(s).
• Implemented new multi-layered authentication and authorization system based on ASP.NET Identity Framework, which checked for authorization at the district, school, and user levels.
• Designed and implemented applications that facilitated management of district, school, and user access to application features and historical data. The application was used by internal staff, as well as manager users from client districts, to authorize access to services and resources.
• Established new schema for storing multiple frameworks of educational standards, spanning multiple subjects. The new schema allowed questions from our question bank to be associated with multiple educational standards from different standard frameworks.
• Designed and implemented application for entry and management of educational standard frameworks and their standards and groupings.
• Designed and implemented application for entry and management of course alignment data, including associations to educational standards, definition of curriculum schedule by marking periods, and management of rule-based course settings and limitations.
• Designed and implemented third version of content management and editor web application on new stack. Implementation included integration with ckEditor, a JavaScript based, client-side open source rich content editor component, to replace EditLive! Java applet.
• Designed and implemented a unified, rule-based assessment compilation and rendering framework, which facilitated the delivery of assessments via multiple formats, including PDF for print format, and via new version of in-house online testing platform (updated for use with the new platform and stack). Implementation of PDF formatting service included invoking of the now separated Razor templating and data-binding engine from ASP.NET MVC to produce an HTML document that, along with a CSS3 stylesheet, was converted to a PDF file.
• Rebuilt online testing platform on new stack, and integrated it into content management and editor application, to allow content editor users to preview assessment questions in online format and approve them for online test taking.

• Designed user interface for interactive touch screen advertising and digital signage
• Designed and developed website for marketing purposes
• Administered wide area network of self-service, touch screen kiosks.
• Researched and developed system software for self-service, touch screen terminals that provided financial services such as bill payment, check cashing, and issuing pre-paid debit cards.
• Implemented secure, time-sensitive terminal authentication system, in which a private key was used to generate an authentication token on both the client and server side. The token periodically changed to thwart brute force attacks.
• Interfaced with secure financial networks and reporting software. Integration involved industry standard security components, protocols, and policies including but not limited to SSL and PCI-DSS.
• Architected server-side hosting environment in compliance with PCI-DSS in conjunction with Mainstream Technologies of Little Rock, AR.
• Integrated POS (Point of Sale) and vending hardware using industry-standard communications protocols.
• Developed data driven website for remote management of a distributed network of self-service, touch screen kiosks and their peripherals.
• Developed graphical user interfaces (GUI) for touch screen kiosks, using Visual Basic.NET and WinForms.
• And much, much more...